


happy endings are new beginnings

by hudders-and-hiddles (LeslieWrites)



Series: romance and nibblies [9]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Family, Feelings, M/M, Moving, Originally Posted on Tumblr, POV David Rose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:15:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22869982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeslieWrites/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: Thoughts on homes and happiness and having to say goodbye.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: romance and nibblies [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1325132
Comments: 24
Kudos: 187





	happy endings are new beginnings

It’s chaos.

There are people everywhere, some calling for others to come help them grab the far end of a sofa or a table that’s too heavy or awkward to lift alone, others hauling all their carefully-labelled boxes through the front door with all the care typically afforded to things that aren’t theirs, which is to say practically none at all. The noise and the movement are overwhelming, and David stands in the middle of it all trying to catch his breath.

A hand finds its way to his back, settling in warm and steady against the stretch of his spine. “You okay?”

He blinks, and the memories of the CRA raid blur at the edges and fade. In their place is the same chaos, the same noise, but here there are no government agents in tacky windbreakers. Instead there’s Roland and Jocelyn, Ronnie, Jake, Stevie, Twyla, and what feels like practically half of the rest of the town. The boxes aren’t going out the door but coming in, each one being delivered to its appropriate room thanks to Patrick’s organized and efficient labeling system. Alexis is flitting about on the phone in a panic, her Miu Miu peep toes clacking loudly as she paces back and forth on the new hardwood floor David had asked Ronnie to install to match the one at the Apothecary, but it’s not Stavros on the line this time–it’s her assistant in New York, and she’s tittering on about deadlines and clickthrough rates. 

David looks down at the four gold rings on his hand, at the one on the hand Patrick holds out for him to take, and thinks for the millionth time about fate, about all the things that had to happen to lead him to this precise moment, standing hand-in-hand with his husband in their new house, surrounded by the suffocating goodwill of their friends and family and neighbors. Patrick’s fingers tighten around his, and David grounds himself in the feeling.

“Yeah. It’s just… a lot, you know?”

Patrick nods toward the living room at the back of the house, and David lets himself be pulled along in his wake. It’s quieter here, farther from the mess of an unloading zone out on the front lawn. Quieter still when Patrick wraps him in his arms and lets him breathe into the familiar curve of his neck. The twisted knot of worry and happiness and melancholy and overwhelming love that seems to have lodged itself beneath his breastbone these last few weeks loosens just enough that he can breathe through the tangled strands of it all. 

“’ms’ry,” he mumbles eventually against the smooth patch of skin in front of his lips, pressing a soft kiss there and leaning back just enough to be heard. “I know I should be more excited about this, and I am. Excited. But I—”

"You’re allowed to feel however you feel, David.”

“No, I know. I just…”

Somewhere down the hall, Alexis’s voice breaks through into their bubble of calm and quiet, and David turns toward the sound automatically, an old habit he isn’t sure will ever disappear. Her words get lost in the distance, but her tone is shrill and exasperated in a way it only ever is when dealing with their family. Usually it’s directed at him.

“You miss them already,” Patrick says, unfailingly understanding.

David does. He misses the bubble of the kettle when his mother makes her morning tea and the hum of her voice through the wall as she talks to her wigs. He misses the irritation of his father barging into the middle of a conversation and the secret joy of overhearing him talking business with Stevie. He misses the smell of Alexis’s perfume and the sound of her breath in the darkness and the softness of her hair between his fingers on the nights when she’s feeling unsettled and asks him to French braid it the same way she used to when they were kids. He misses them in a way he can’t possibly describe because they aren’t gone. They’re here, now, out front causing chaos that’s certain to have already made their new neighbors hate them, and David misses them so deep in the marrow of his bones he wonders how he had gone so long without knowing he needed this, without realizing that they’re as much a part of him as his lungs, his hands, his aching, tender heart.

But Alexis flies back to New York tomorrow, and next week his mother is off to start pre-production work on the fourth Crows film, which she’s not only starring in but also directing. And now that the last of his and Alexis’s things are out of the motel, his dad and Stevie will start the process of renovating their room, and soon enough it’ll be almost like none of this ever happened.

As much as David had wished and hoped and sometimes even prayed for that in their early days here, there’s not a single thing he would erase about it now.

He doesn’t bother wiping away his tears before he turns back to Patrick. “They’re my home,” he says with a shrug. “I mean, you are, too, but—”

“I know.” Patrick gives him a sliver of a smile, one of those looks that makes him feel all cracked open and raw, like Patrick can see right down inside to all the things he can’t manage to say. He leans in and brushes their lips briefly together, soft and gentle and sweet. “It just takes time,” he says. “To get used to missing them. To… figure out what home looks like now.”

David looks around at the afternoon sunlight dripping across the new, properly adult-sized sofa they’d picked out together at the furniture store in Elm Valley, the slate facade of their fireplace, the picture windows that peer out over their back lawn, the piano on the far wall he’d saved up to buy Patrick as a wedding gift. He can see them here, years and years on–the backyard barbecues and the snowy nights in. The lazy Sunday afternoons they gift themselves when they finally manage to find someone they trust to mind the store. The weekends he spends counting down the minutes until his parents are finally out of their guest room and back on their way to a house of their own. The holidays they celebrate with Roses and Brewers drifting in and out of all the rooms of this little house, filling it up with laughter and music and life. 

There’s a stack of boxes against the wall, and David shifts them until he can pull the tape open on one labelled _photos_ in Patrick’s tidy handwriting. The one he wants is right on top, like Patrick had somehow known he’d come looking for it, and he unwraps it carefully, glad to find it’s survived the move intact. 

It’s a picture from their wedding day, and it’s an absolute mess. It was supposed to have been a posed shot, but somehow his dad is the only one actually looking at the camera. His mother is in mid-conversation with Marcy and Clint, who somehow look both delighted and baffled. Stevie and Alexis are laughing together beside them, his sister’s arm thrown across Stevie’s shoulders, and he and Patrick are too busy looking at each other to notice any of the rest. When they’d gotten the photos back from Ray last week, David had nearly dismissed this one as an obvious throwaway shot. But the more he’d looked at it, the more he’d come to love it, not unlike some of the art he’d once displayed in his gallery. It’s messy and unpolished, but it’s real and it’s honest and it’s bubbling with the kind of happiness he didn’t think actually existed before they’d found themselves in this town.

He crosses to the mantel, placing the small frame neatly at an angle, and feels his husbands arms slip around him from behind, his strong, steady hands smoothing across David’s belly. “Better?”

“I think it’s a pretty good start.”

Patrick presses a smile into his shoulder blade and holds him tighter. Down the hall, voices are rising again, and he knows they’re going to have to go break up whatever argument his family has inevitably caused now. God, he really is going to miss them. But for now he tips his head back to rest against Patrick’s, closing his eyes and listening to the torrent of noise that accompanies them wherever they go, trying his best to hold on to this feeling, to having all the people he loves together for just a little longer.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, the credit for the photo idea goes to [Bea](https://holmesapothecary.tumblr.com/post/185085678358/sometimes-i-kind-of-just-want-the-last-shot-of). She said it 9 months ago at this point, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as [wild-aloof-rebel](http://wild-aloof-rebel.tumblr.com) (my Schitt's Creek blog) or [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com) (my main).


End file.
